Sunday Lunch

I love being alone at home. When the house is empty, I have the sudden desire to do things. I think it's the excitement that takes away the usual laziness (not that I don't love having the rest of the family at home.) Sometimes I resort to frenzied house tidying or singing along to insanely loud music and sometimes I cook.


Red + Green + White = Perfect meal
If the meal has all three colours, it generally means that you've included something from each food group, i.e. carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals.

This is a relatively easy meal.


For the pasta- Make simple tomato sauce while the pasta is boiling- same recipe as used here. 


For the broccoli cheese- steam broccoli like I did in this recipe. For the cheese sauce- Put 2 tablespoons of butter (50g) in a hot pan and add 2 tablespoons of flour. Stir well and add 200ml of milk. Keep stirring till it thickens. Add 2 tsps of garlic salt. 
Then pour sauce over broccoli and grate cheese over the top (I used Red Leicester). Put in the oven for about ten minutes.


While that is baking, make the bruschetta. This is not the usual raw one that I do. I cooked it. Chop up 2 tomatoes into small pieces. Add to hot pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Let the tomatoes cook well till soft. Add pinch of salt and pinch of lemon pepper. Lastly, add a tbsp of pesto- recipe here. 


NOTE: If you don't have any bought pesto and don't feel like making it from scratch, you could even add chopped up basil leaves. 


Add the tomatoes to lightly toasted bread and then chop up some mozzarella for the top.


By this time, the cheese on the broccoli will be nicely melted. Take out from the oven and rest for about 5 minutes while the sauce thickens again.


Potato Patty- This is the easiest part of the meal. Take out 1 McCain patty from freezer. Defrost and lightly brown on a pan with a smear of oil. 


Voila. And the meal is done. This was enough for 2, so my brother got to eat some for dinner. 

Ate in front of the TV while I watched 'Gone with the Wind' (Well, just a part of it. That movie is 4 hours!) 
Perfect Sunday afternoon. :)

Pesto Broccoli

I made this as an entre for my ravioli meal. 


Pesto is really easy to make. All you need are the right ingredients to blend up. We usually have a bottle of homemade pesto in the fridge. We used to follow the recipe from the book, 'Best-Ever Pasta' (Linda Fraser), but now I think my Mum just improvises.


The recipe + modifications:
3/4 cup of fresh basil leaves (not hard to find, but make sure it's not Thai basil- that has a lemon-ey flavour), 4 cloves of peeled garlic, 4 tbsps pine nuts- these are not easily available, but we use cashew-nuts. Tastes pretty good, so add about a handful and a half, 5 tbsps of olive oil, salt and pepper, 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan (the only cheese that can be a substitute is Pecorino.) 
Blend all this up till the consistency that you're happy with. I prefer slightly gritty.

Parboil/steam chopped broccoli. What I did was put the broccoli into a bowl of water and microwave for about 5 minutes. In a pan with about 2 tbsp of oil, add onions (1/2 finely chopped) and garlic (2 cloves, grated) (essentials in everything I cook!). Then add about 4 or 5 tbsps of pesto and the broccoli. Cook till broccoli is tender. I like a bite on the veggies. Shouldn't be too soft. 

Tortellini Funghi Pomodoro

And my love for pasta grows further. My Mum suggested I go to Northern Italy and work in a tiny ristorante, oh and maybe work with an architect as well.

When I am bored and more bored than lazy, I usually end up cooking. This time, greatly influenced by the delicate intricate cooking I've been watching on Masterchef, I decided to take pasta-making one step further and try ravioli and tortellini.

Funghi- mushrooms. It's funny how most people associate fungus with something disgusting. I made the filling for the pasta with fungus. 

Take about 2 cups of finely chopped mushrooms. Add them to a pan of hot olive oil and 4 cloves of grated garlic. Stir together. Add 1 tsp of salt, 1tsp of dried sage, 1/4 tsp of pepper and 1 tsp of cinnamon. Once all the water has come out of the mushrooms and evaporated. Add about 50ml of thick cream. This will combine all the ingredients together to form a nice creamy, slightly sticky filling.

To make the pasta- pretty simple. 2 cups of flour + 3 eggs and a pinch of salt. This time, instead of mixing it out on the counter like I did for the Mushroom Lasagne, I did it in a bowl. Far less mess. If the dough is sticky, dust more flour on the surface while kneading. If you don't have a pasta maker, it will take time rolling it out into thin sheets. I don't think I would have taken the effort to do that. Wrap in clingfilm and rest the dough for a while before rolling. Roll them out into quite thin sheets, because when you make the ravioli/tortellini it becomes a double layer.


Note: Keep dusting it lightly with flour. If it's not dry enough, it would roll out easily. Also, keep the dough in the clingfilm so it doesn't dry out.